Channels

Services

Google's new AJAX API playground

An example of the AJAX API Playground map output
Google has released a new AJAX API Playground giving developers a way of learning how to use Google's JavaScript APIs that is completely interactive. The new tool is built on Google's App Engine and will make learning and testing code for the JavaScript APIs, a lot easier. The AJAX APIs Playground source code is open source and has been made available under the Apache 2.0 license.

According to a blog post by Google Developer Programs Engineer, Ben Lisbakken, "The AJAX API Playground is currently loaded with over 170 samples for 8 Google JavaScript APIs (Maps, Search, Feeds, Calendar, Visualization, Language, Blogger, Libraries and Earth) that you can edit and run to help you explore what Google's APIs have to offer."

The new API Playground will be the new official way that Google will show JavaScript samples. The Playground also includes the ability to save, so that you can hold onto an edited sample to work on later, along with export, which allows a developer to "modify a sample and publish the code to a permanent url". Users can learn about adding samples on the project wiki.